Lice outbreaks vex parents

Morning Sentinel
by Darla L. Pickett
January 29, 2008

Head lice -- the mere words strike panic in the hearts of many parents.

Mothers pile their shopping carts with boxes of treatment solutions, spend hours combing through their children's hair with a fine-tooth comb and spend another anxious two weeks checking to make sure no little white eggs have reappeared.

Schools can be breeding grounds for this small parasite that attaches its eggs, called nits, to hair strands. Those hatch into new lice. Students, especially in lower grades, mingle so closely that they often keep passing them back and forth, school officials say.

Mercer Elementary School is no exception, according to parents of kindergarten children there, who say the problem is just not going away.

"Yuck! It's gross. Just discussing it makes me itch," said parent Laura Lapointe, who said she is treating her child for the fifth time this year.

Nicky Clark said her child has been infested four times.

"She cries so. She has long beautiful hair. There are a lot of us mothers. We keep at it for weeks, because you need to," Clark said.

Clark and Lapointe say treatment is costly too, at $15 to $20 a bottle for the chemicals that kill the lice.

Both women agreed the lice problem is not the school's fault, but that school officials could do a better job communicating each time there is an outbreak.

"It just keeps happening, it is the norm every year in kindergarten. But I have not heard of it lasting into January like it has here. They should be checking the kids every day," Clark said. "I'm not asking for them to name the child. I just want to know when there is a new outbreak."

Debbie Lancaster, lead nurse in School Administrative District 54, which includes Mercer, said the school has to be very careful about reporting outbreaks because of confidentiality issues.

"We are not allowed to say that we have a child with lice in your child's classroom," Lancaster said. "That child has rights."

What the schools do, Lancaster said, is send out an information letter at the beginning of each school year, informing parents of the possibility of lice and the preferred treatments.

"Once the head is treated for live lice, they must mechanically remove the lice eggs with a fine-tooth comb. It's hours of work. If you miss one, you miss a whole life cycle. Lice are very resilient," said Lancaster.

"It hasn't been any different than any other school," said Marjolaine Harriet, principal at the Mercer school.

"We try to send out informative letters and take precautions. When it happens, a nurse calls the home (of the infested student) and talks to them about how to deal with it. It's no fun, but common."

Dr. Dora Mills, director of the state's Bureau of Health, said it is important to remember that having lice is neither an indicator of poor hygiene nor a disease.

"It's the most dreaded non-disease, but very common," Mills said. But is really important to remember it is not a disease."

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